It’s a Wrap: TBEX Europe in Girona, Spain

It seems like we were just getting excited about going to Spain and now TBEX Europe is a thing of the past. It came and went, and in between there was plenty of great food, opportunities for learning and to do business, and plenty of fun. But don’t take our word for it, read what others are saying. (And while you’re at it, why not register for TBEX 13 in Toronto.)

NOTE: We will be updating this list regularly. Have you written a post-Girona review, wrap-up, photo essay, or anything else related to the conference? Leave a comment below with the link, send us a tweet @TBEXevents, or let us know on the Facebook page – we want to hear your feedback, and we want to share your posts with other TBEX blog readers!

Comments

Thanks for including me, good sports that you are! When all is done and the debris dusted off, it was a very pleasant experience and I met a crapload of cool, interesting, people. If you’ll have me, it would be kick ass to do it all again soon!

Hello all. I’m stil in a Costa Brava adventure. I spent two nights at the beautiful Parador de Aiguablava (such a view!), then left for another hotel which the Costa Brava board didn’t quite reach and they were full. They kindly arranged a different hotel – Silken Sant Jorge – and a car, which came to fetch me. This was impressive all by itself as the Hotel Del Teatre is in the approximate middle of nowhere. Anyway, Silken took me in unexpectedly and Teatre will have me tomorrow. Nice people.

Wrote a long piece today on travel blogging for newbies. Will post shortly once my travel snafus get all straightened out and I can catch my breath.

Looking forward to reading what everyone else has posted – and sorting through the 7,125,314 business cards from TBEX. 🙂

I think the spectacular parties were pretty hard to match in terms of conference content and did appear to have received the lion’s share of planning. I LOVED them. The networking opportunities were excellent.

Re: sessions, I felt, and others I talked to did also, that the sessions were sometimes great and sometimes inconsistent, too few, and perhaps too general or beginning level; more concrete, specific information would have been helpful and I only got that at a session or two. Perhaps more workshop style sessions would be helpful to people and even a poll beforehand so you know the skill level of the people coming.

A major area for improvement is in writing workshops. May I suggest that next time an entire track be devoted to writing, because very few blogs exist (well) without good writing. There seems to be some debate on the importance of good writing but I for one think it’s paramount to great content – even if the writing is in short, bite-sized titles and teasers. The best sessions I went were all based on visual content; the writing bit needs to catch up. Another area of training might be in cultural awareness – there was some pretty shocking behavior on the part of one or two peeps on the after tours who seemed pretty unaware of how not to be that obnoxious tourist. That’s a trait that should not be encouraged in travel blogging.

One last thing. There should be morning as well as afternoon sessions which basically repeat, at least in one afternoon or the other. It was such a bummer to miss so many great sessions!

I don’t think there is any debate about the importance of good writing skills. That is a given. It seems to me the debate is about good writing being the only important thing, or if marketing (including SEO), distribution, sales and all the rest are important too.

Hi guys, thanks for a great TBEX. I need a vacaion now!
I just finished my Germans post about TBEX & Costa Brava. The English posts will follow soon on travel-itch.com. Until then, learn some German! 😀

Thanks for the list of posts, and for including my one with my “marketing hat” on!

I have also now done one about the debate of focusing on writing versus the reality of having to get traffic and the numbers that PR companies and Brands expect before you will get invited on trips or get other forms of revenue called: Travel Blogging: When To Be a Storyteller Not A Travel Blogger that may add to the discussion above: http://www.tipsfortravellers.com/2012/09/travel-blogging-when-to-be-storyteller.html

Will you be doing a post conference survey? Some thoughts if that helps building also on the points that some made above:
(1) This was my first travel blog conference and TBEX. I learnt a lot, made great connections and had a great time. I think it achieved the goal.
(2) Some learning and things for next time:
– Would be great to get some big hitter European keynote speakers (like your USA ones you had this time) to bring a European take on some of the issues. The keynotes were great, but would be good to mix it up a bit with a European flavour.
– Repeat some of the sessions so more can get to the topics. I guess is people use the online system early enough it will flag where the hottest ones will be and duplicate those. Even if a different speaker on same topic if the original does not want to do that?
– Have some case study sessions on (1) how people have built their blogs and how. (2) how big travel brands run their sites and approach travel – like maybe sites like LonelyPlanet. (3) Travel and blogger program case studies.

Again want to say how great this TBEX was. So much so I have already bought my ticket and booked my flights for TBEX Toronto! Well done.

I wanted to say a huge thank you to all the organisers – TBEX and Costa Brava tourism. The event was very well organised and I enjoyed the sessions – learned a lot, the timings were very good and we had plenty of time to get to know each other.

I have not included a lot of information about the conference on my post, as it is not relevant to my readers – a brief mention was enough 🙂

Once again, thank you all and look forward to the next TBEX Europe event

Here’s my post on Girona and TBEX: an absolute beginners not native english speaker travel blogger point of view. I blog in Italian but this post has the english translation:
Girona. More than a six-letter word near Barcelona while booking a Ryanair flight.http://www.labarbanoinviaggio.com/?p=274
TBEX was great. Thanks to everybody!

Trackbacks

[…] who enjoyed the hospitality of the Costa Brava region in northeastern Spain, as part of the post TBEX conference activities. Since Costa Brava was selected by National Geographic as one of the Top Destinations […]

[…] of my trip before.And I was in the company of people I like and adore – I was there for a travel bloggers conference, after all.This may be the answer.May it be that what truly sours one’s experience in a place […]

[…] lion’s bottom so I’ll return again to Girona.What Barbara wrote about staying in GironaYou’ll find a list of what other bloggers wrote about TBEX and Girona here Visitor Information for GironaWe booked our apartment in Girona through Wimdu.com who have Holiday […]

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